Saturday, February 14, 2015

Auto hot dater for Singles Appreciation Day (SAD)

Out of luck, out of love, but definitely not out of job! On this fateful day (14feb15), yours truly come to realized one by one the brethren have left to join the dark side. Rather unfortunately, there is still one last man standing, holding the ground resisting the "social norms" to sign on the dotted line.

In certain parts of the world with chinese populations 光棍节 (guang1 kun2 jie1) aka singles day is celebrated every 11november (11.11) of the year. However, in the other part of the world, it seems to yours truly singles are not celebrated. Yours truly celebrate Singles Appreciation Day aka S.A.D on 14Feb by making auto hot dater powered by arduino!!

So, how do singles mingle??? What are the laws of attraction between male and female humans? What are the grounds two humans decided to stay together and till death do us part?? These are questions yours truly ponder upon but yet to have answers to them. Until recently, one of the "bro"was acquainted with a girl via dating apps on social media (tinder, paktor, and so many more. Yeah, he is a trawler). Quickly they become an item and subject to much gossip; which unfortunately yours truly is in the party and have to GIGO (Garbage In Garbage Out). Having heard the experience of him using dating apps, perhaps there is a way to quantify how human hookup. The biggest face palm moment is when "bro" mentioned he "swiped right" at every single female profile.

From the above conversation, yours truly assumed other parameters such as profile picture on dating app, human attributes are held equal and have formulated some hypotheses. These hypotheses are: male have to swipe right more often [1] and be less selective of the female profiles [2] in hope of getting a higher count of "matched" (both male and female swiped right at the other's profile); a set of preferred female pictures of the said male subject can be trained into a mathematical model, then feed into image recognition system via openCV where test data is acquired from the dating app's female profile picture; automated decision making is done within openCV and then instruction to swipe left or right is achieved with an arduino.

To answer the above hypotheses, an experiment has to be setup. The following parts needed are part1 of the experiments: swiping left or right using arduino with random 50-50 chance, and increased swiping frequency per hour in hope for a higher count of "matched".

parts list
1. Arduino (an uno is used here)
2. Regular servo motor
3. smart phone with a stylus (note3 is used out of convenience) or without a stylus.
3a. Stylus can be made by referring to this URL http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-Capacitive-Stylus/
4. dating app of choice (tinder is used out of popularity with "bro")
5. jig to hold the smart phone, and servo with stylus. (a 3D printed PCB vice is inverted out of convenience)

Step1: stylus and servo

1. assemble the stylus on the "zero" position of the servo motor. Servo will be moving from 0 to 90deg, or 0 to -90deg
2. an apparatus to hold the stylus. Being cheap, yours truly have used some blue-tac, but the effect is not good. Will elaborate more at observation.

Step2: Arduino programming0. pin7 of arduino is wired to the servo.
1. random 50-50 to swipe left or right.2. servo to rotate L or R depending on the random value 0 or 1
code here:

Step3: Setting up the jig1. align the smartphone with the stylus on servo contraption at the apex of the servo rotation.

The final setup is in the following picture

Step4: Enjoy!

Observations:The cheapo contraption of stylus on servo needs a rework, e.g with a L-R clicker type of setup. If the alignment for the current setup is not aligned properly or out of the way as observed from the video above, it will swipe left irregardless of the random value calculated within the program.

Final Note: Ego might be dented, but NO humans are harmed in this setup. The profile on dating apps are fictitious, and deleted after this experiment.